Community journalist RJ Ledesma among 19 killed in Negros military operation

CMFR/PHILIPPINES — Community journalist RJ Ledesma was killed during a military operation in Toboso, Negros Occidental, on April 19, 2026.

Ledesma, 30, served as the regional coordinator for the Altermidya Network and an editor for Paghimutad-Negros. Altermidya, in a statement, shared that he spent his career documenting the lives of those often forgotten—the sakadas (sugar workers), landless farmers, and families affected by reclamation projects in Bacolod and palm oil expansion in Candoni. 

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) reported Ledesma as one of 19 casualties in a series of encounters with the New People’s Army (NPA) in Barangay Salamanca. According to a formal statement issued by the AFP, troops from the 79th Infantry “Masaligan” Battalion, under the 303rd Infantry Brigade and 3rd Infantry Battalion, engaged with the NPA at approximately 3:58 AM in the Northern Negros area. However, media reports and rights groups have strongly disputed this narrative.

Altermidya clarified on its April 22 statement that Ledesma was in the area to conduct “immersion reporting” on the social impact of large-scale renewable energy projects. Media reports cited Human Rights Advocates Negros (HRAN) which reported that Ledesma was not at the initial clash site in Sitio Sinugmawan but was instead killed in a separate pursuit operation in Sitio Plariding. 

The circumstances of the incident, dubbed the “Toboso 19,” became even more contentious, when on April 27, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) released a statement identifying the casualties. The CPP claimed that only 10 of the fatalities were armed NPA combatants, while the remaining nine, including Ledesma, UP incumbent student councilor Alyssa Alano, and two Filipino-American activists, were unarmed civilians and non-combatants. 

Altermidya noted that the military’s attempt to portray Ledesma as a combatant follows a pattern of “state-sponsored vilification” and red-tagging of alternative media. In 2022, the Philippine Army’s 303rd Brigade issued a statement that described a report of Paghimutad as “propaganda.”

Cebu Daily News on April 25 shared how, before becoming a pillar of alternative media in Negros, RJ was a student-scholar and the editor-in-chief of The Spectrum, the student publication of the University of St. La Salle-Bacolod. Friends remember him as poet who believed that journalism was a form of service to the people.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has launched an independent probe into the incident, citing “inconsistencies” in the identities of the deceased. The CHR called for a strict adherence to International Humanitarian Law, emphasizing that “in case of doubt, persons shall be presumed civilians…”

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) expressed that Ledesma’s death illustrates the extreme risks faced by community journalists in conflict-prone areas, especially those who have been repeatedly subjected to red-tagging.

The pattern of red-tagging that hounded Ledesma indicates the need for a rigorous and transparent investigation of his death.